MAC,PC,LINUX

[IC3]

Hi everyone,

i know this is a very noobish question and there are lots of different points of view on this question. i recentely have made enough money for a new computer (which i need desperatly). i was wondering since i have watched the hak5 episodes i so a mixture of xp and mac, but whenever i see Matt use his mac it is always in xp. If i choose pc, is it possible to have it blank and put xp on there or is vista acceptable in this case.

Note: also any suggestions on: is double booting linux and pc or mac smart?or can i utilize the same tools with just one?

cheers,

IC3

[H@L0_F00]

Hi everyone,

i know this is a very noobish question and there are lots of different points of view on this question. i recentely have made enough money for a new computer (which i need desperatly). i was wondering since i have watched the hak5 episodes i so a mixture of xp and mac, but whenever i see Matt use his mac it is always in xp. If i choose pc, is it possible to have it blank and put xp on there or is vista acceptable in this case.

Note: also any suggestions on: is double booting linux and pc or mac smart?or can i utilize the same tools with just one?

cheers,

IC3

You should never buy a preloaded computer because they put soooo much crapware on it it's not funny... and it depends on your needs, how familiar you are with Linux, and how knowledgeable your are about everything your asking about in general (which it doesn't seem like you are(not a flame))

[IC3]

this is the first computer i have ever bought (first not hand-me-down) i am familiar with linux but i am just very nervous about this because i watn to make a good choice. i want to stick with this computer for a long time and have it still run nicely

[H@L0_F00]

this is the first computer i have ever bought (first not hand-me-down) i am familiar with linux but i am just very nervous about this because i watn to make a good choice. i want to stick with this computer for a long time and have it still run nicely

have you ever dualbooted? I'm still pretty noobish to Linux but dualbooting WinXP and Ubuntu 8.10 was a breeze. How many partitions do you want/need? Have you ever installed a Linux distro?

[IC3]

i just recently dualbooted linux with vista. my computer did not have enough space. so i could not do it for long. i was just wondering since whenever i watch hak5 i always see them using xp. so, i was wondering if i should get that or a mac. along those guidelines. i just dont have a lot of time to write this. i was just wondering about your oponions and such.

cheers,

jake

[H@L0_F00]

i just recently dualbooted linux with vista. my computer did not have enough space. so i could not do it for long. i was just wondering since whenever i watch hak5 i always see them using xp. so, i was wondering if i should get that or a mac. along those guidelines. i just dont have a lot of time to write this. i was just wondering about your oponions and such.

cheers,

jake

I've only used Vista once so I can't be considered a "reliable source" of whether XP or Vista is better but my experience + what most other people say would = not Vista lol not using Vista would also decrease your "minimum install" budget sine Vista needs 2 gigs of RAM just to run the damn OS!! And I find macs just plain annoying and trivial. I'd say stick with Linux + XP. (and Linux is purposely first ;) )

[IC3]

thank so much! i was actually doing some research and i want to run something by you. so i was researching boot camp for macs. and within the xp part you can use vmw to run linux inside, but you just got to buy more ram. it is 100$ per, but for this i think it is a good deal. i think that is getting the best of both worlds. or three worlds in this case! thanks so much to responding to both my posts. happy holidays.

cheers,

IC3

[VaKo]

Who cares if Vista needs 2GB of RAM? It knows how to use it and the cost is chump-change these days.

[Xarf]

The reason the cast uses XP is probably the same reason I do. It's far more slimline than Vista. I know that Darren uses an Acer aspire one which has a single core and a max of 1.5GB RAM, for these reasons XP is an excellent choice. It's lightweight, easy to use, reliable and highly supported, compared to Vista which is slightly more "end user friendly", "looks nicer" but requires a superior set of hardware to achieve the same performance as XP.

That said, possibly the reason that I, darren, matt, the majority of the IT community running Windows and 95% of Business is still using XP is that XP does and probably will always have the best Performance to Hardware ratio for 90% of all users.

If you want to dual-boot linux, that's fine. With the GUI built into most modern Nix distributions it's ridiculously easy anyway, even setting up a bootloader is automatic. That's your call.

As mentioned above by other users I'd also recommend against getting a pre-made PC as they tend to be "non-downgradable" or at least "hard to downgrade" since 90% of all PCs now-a-days are shipped with SATA HDD's and XP will only support modern SATA drives with manufactuer drivers, which means a good traul for manufactueres drivers, or as I discovered buying a new hard disk (some manufactueres wont release their disk drivers for XP installs).

Not only that but in terms of Cost to Hardware you're going to get 50% more hardware if you build it yourself.

sine Vista needs 2 gigs of RAM just to run the damn OS!!

Just not true. Most end users can run Vista on 1GB RAM with absolutely no problems at all(Infact all of my family does). You should remember that most people just use a computer for Web/Email/Music etc.

the cost is chump-change these days

If £50 is chump change then yes, however like I; I'm sure that a lot of the people reading the forums don't see it the same.

[VaKo]

£10 a gig is a cheap upgrade.

[metatron]

I say buy a Apple G4 cube (dirt cheap) and upgrade the memory for OSX stuff, buy a Dell X300 (dirt cheap) for Linux and buy a cheap new HP/Dell desktop with Windows Vista and put in a better graphics card.

[IC3]

thanks so much everyone. i was wondering if you read my post further up the page about the mac. doest that sound like a good idea to you all?

cheers,

IC3

[darkwolf]

I run a mac myself and have very few problems with it. My biggest problem is finding software for certain tasks. After searching though you can usually find the software you need or you can find an equivalent. To a certain extent I believe that mac is able to be *loosely* described as a windows version of unix. OS X has several of the powerful tools available to the various *nix users with an ease to operate similar to windows. Some others may disagree with me on these points but in my opinion macs are better than windows and comparable to *nix. I am planning on buying me a new laptop soon and I'm gonna run a linux distro on it instead of windows. Hope that this bit of rambling was helpful.

[IC3]

thanks so much! if anyone else has any points of views or thoughts to contribute please do they can only help!

cheers,

IC3

[snakey]

straight fedora/debian install :)

[vector]

I've only used Vista once so I can't be considered a "reliable source" of whether XP or Vista is better but my experience + what most other people say would = not Vista lol not using Vista would also decrease your "minimum install" budget sine Vista needs 2 gigs of RAM just to run the damn OS!! And I find macs just plain annoying and trivial. I'd say stick with Linux + XP. (and Linux is purposely first ;) )

The reason the cast uses XP is probably the same reason I do. It's far more slimline than Vista. I know that Darren uses an Acer aspire one which has a single core and a max of 1.5GB RAM, for these reasons XP is an excellent choice. It's lightweight, easy to use, reliable and highly supported, compared to Vista which is slightly more "end user friendly", "looks nicer" but requires a superior set of hardware to achieve the same performance as XP.

That said, possibly the reason that I, darren, matt, the majority of the IT community running Windows and 95% of Business is still using XP is that XP does and probably will always have the best Performance to Hardware ratio for 90% of all users.

If you want to dual-boot linux, that's fine. With the GUI built into most modern Nix distributions it's ridiculously easy anyway, even setting up a bootloader is automatic. That's your call.

As mentioned above by other users I'd also recommend against getting a pre-made PC as they tend to be "non-downgradable" or at least "hard to downgrade" since 90% of all PCs now-a-days are shipped with SATA HDD's and XP will only support modern SATA drives with manufactuer drivers, which means a good traul for manufactueres drivers, or as I discovered buying a new hard disk (some manufactueres wont release their disk drivers for XP installs).

Not only that but in terms of Cost to Hardware you're going to get 50% more hardware if you build it yourself.

Just not true. Most end users can run Vista on 1GB RAM with absolutely no problems at all(Infact all of my family does). You should remember that most people just use a computer for Web/Email/Music etc.

If £50 is chump change then yes, however like I; I'm sure that a lot of the people reading the forums don't see it the same.

this is absolute nonsense. i cant belive people are STILL talking about down grading to XP. First of all i'm not sure what vista installs you've been using but ive never needed 2 gigs min ram just to run vista, and if you take a look around its even hard to find a laptop today that comes with less than 3 gigs of ram, alot of newer systems are even shipping with 4+ gigs and come with vista x64. and the reason youll find most businesses and alot of end users still using XP is not because theyve downgraded but beacuse they still have good working machines that run XP. what company owner is going to go out and spend thousands of dollars to upgrade all of their computers to vista.

basically if youre buying a new computer that comes with vista i would just leave it as is. it will come complete and ready to go. you wont have to worry about searching all over the web for drivers for shit only to find out it still wont work right in a different OS. if you want to give dual booting a try go ahead, but what i always recommend to people who want to expiriment with different OS's is try running them in VM. that way you can mess around all you like and you never have to worry about fucking shit up. but seriously dont listen to nonsense about vista vs XP. people came out of the gates pissed off at vista like 2 years ago and theyre still pissed about old shit that isnt even relevent today.

[msp301]

I use a Mac for programming and general computer use and it has caused me no problems after buying it a year ago. Here's some software I recommend for Mac OS:

- Adium (Instant Messaging Client)

- Cyberduck (FTP Client)

- Mac The Ripper (DVD Ripper)

- VLC (Media Player)

- Transmission (Simple Torrent Client)

- Text Wrangler (Programmer's Text Editor)

- Burn (Simple Disc Burner)

These are not freely available:

- TextMate (Programmer's Text Editor)

- Coda (All-In-One Text-Based Website Editor)

If it also helps, Boot Camp can be used to dual boot a Mac with either Windows or Linux, I haven't been able to successfully have a full working Linux distro on my Macbook that I have been able to get working properly with the hardware, although there tutorials you can find from Google on installing Gentoo on Macbooks which you may find useful if you want to play around with it :)

Hope that helps :)

[Artoo]

this is absolute nonsense. i cant belive people are STILL talking about down grading to XP. First of all i'm not sure what vista installs you've been using but ive never needed 2 gigs min ram just to run vista, and if you take a look around its even hard to find a laptop today that comes with less than 3 gigs of ram, alot of newer systems are even shipping with 4+ gigs and come with vista x64. and the reason youll find most businesses and alot of end users still using XP is not because theyve downgraded but beacuse they still have good working machines that run XP. what company owner is going to go out and spend thousands of dollars to upgrade all of their computers to vista.

basically if youre buying a new computer that comes with vista i would just leave it as is. it will come complete and ready to go. you wont have to worry about searching all over the web for drivers for shit only to find out it still wont work right in a different OS. if you want to give dual booting a try go ahead, but what i always recommend to people who want to expiriment with different OS's is try running them in VM. that way you can mess around all you like and you never have to worry about fucking shit up. but seriously dont listen to nonsense about vista vs XP. people came out of the gates pissed off at vista like 2 years ago and theyre still pissed about old shit that isnt even relevent today.

I agree with this one ;)

[jkdelauney]

Just to toss my own assorted 'me too' into the pile:

For most uses I am primarily a Mac user. I am a very big believer in using the right tool for the job, though. My main machine since October is my 13" Mac Book which I keep an install of Windows XP on to play Evil Genius, and incase I need to run a program for which there is no Mac equivalent.

My primary 'desktop' machine is also a Mac, and older G4 iLamp, though I also have an old AMD machine running XP connected to my TV for the occasional display of data in large scale (such as during the presidential election I had a map up from the Windows machine, and local news up in a PIP box).

I have an old Gateway 2100 Solo which has FreeBSD 4.9 on it, which I keep on hand for network administration, testing wireless range, and the like.

For network services I always fall back to FreeBSD, as it does anything I care to throw at it, and I know it well.

In the end, for me, it's all about what you're going to do with the gear, and what OSs you're comfortable with.